Skip links

Witricity!

First things first: if you have an iPod touch or iPhone and don’t have the TED application, you need to get it. And you can get it from the App Store here. It has been a great way to kill time when I’m bored and to find ispiration. I now have about 20 items saved as favorites, but have watched many, many TED presentations. I’ve been putting off this post for a while since it seemed like I didn’t have enough time to do it. Here it goes.

One that I watched a few weeks back that has been blowing my mind ever since I watched it was entitled “Eric Giler demos wireless electricity (2009)”. I’ve embedded it in this post below:

He starts off by talking about how much “we humans love electricity” . He states that every year there are over 40 billion disposable batteries manufactured every year, for power that is mostly used within a few inches or feet of where there is very inexpensive power available. He reminds us about how much wires suck and how much batteries suck, mostly because their so inefficient. He talks about how a group of MIT physicists came up with a way to transfer power over a distance. They were able to light up light bulb from 2 meters away. He talks about all the technical, physics aspects regarding the experiment, which I won’t get into because I’m not an expert by any means. The issue of safety comes up. He explains why it is completely safe, just as safe as living on the Earth, actually. Next, he blows our minds by showing us the technology in action.

Unbelievable. My jaw dropped instantly. Maybe I’m easily amused, but this seems incredible. I hate cords! I hate batteries! Like he said, they suck! This must have been how people felt when cell phones and wifi came out. Maybe in the near future it will be part of every day life and no one will think anything of it.

What witricity might look like in your home (from Flickr)

With all the buzz on electric cars, the idea that they would be able to charge by themselves is pretty incredible. It’s not like it would be a big effort to plug a cord into your car, but it’s still pretty cool. In the field of medicine, this could come in really handy. My younger brother is deaf and has a Cochlear Implant (which I will likely post more about in the future) and is always having to recharge the batteries for it. If it could simply charge itself while he was at home all day, or at his place of work in the future, this would be incredible!

Everyone wants less cords. I don’t know about you, but underneath my desk is a mess. The TV in our place isn’t much better. Sure, there are great tools to help organize your cords, but I’m sure most people don’t use them, or change things so often it doesn’t make a difference.

I would love to come home one day and not have to dig around to find my cell phone charger’s cord or my iPod charger cord. It would be great just to throw it on the table knowing that it was recharging via Witricity.

I think this technology could change technology as we currently know it. I hope they are able to develop it further and eventually it will find its way into our everyday lives. I can’t see this happening over night, or even within the next year. But I do imagine very soon that this technology will emerge and will likely be an expensive feature on only the top line products. I guess we’ll have to wait and see!

Opinions

Post comment

This is insane! I definitely have never heard of it. I know that basically everytime that I have gone back home on weekends I have always forgot my cord to charge both my cell and ipod. If things could charge themselves it would just make life that much more easy! Great blog!

Post comment

It really is frustrating when forgetting a single cord means you can’t use something for an entire weekend. It’s also frustrating that you have to have the specific cord for specific devices. I think it would be awesome if they developed this so everything could charge off of one source, and not make it device specific. Things would be much, much easier!